There is an ongoing High Court case here about whether a Catholic weekly has the right to call their deity “Allah.”
The weekly was prohibited from using the word “Allah” by the Home Ministry, and the Catholics are appealing.
How bizarre is that?
I have visions of the deity up there in heaven (whatever s/he is called) scratching their head over this one. The world price of rice has doubled in 5 weeks, someone stole the metal in a pylon and blacked out almost the entire state of Sabah when the pylon collapsed, stories of pollution and corruption dominate the newspapers, a couple of young kids – evidently kidnapped by paedophiles – are still missing … and this is what the High Court and the Catholic weekly and the Home Ministry worry about?
In the name of God, let’s have some sense.
Pix: an Australian country road (between Esperance and Stokes…)
Talk about priorities! 😛
Well said, Glenda!
“Nero fiddles while Rome burns”.
I think this aptly sums up my sentiment on these issues which are not unique to Malaysia.
Amen (ah, the irony!).
When listening to a couple of talks given by Michael Shermer about his new book, “Mind of the Market”, he mentioned that humans evolved to cope with a limited capability to perceive beyond the local environment. That is, we’re aware of what’s close by, but beyond that we’re in the cognitive dark. It requires conscious effort to kick our ability to conceptualise beyond that limitation, to remember those problems that face our fellow humans that we ourselves have no direct contact with. It’s only too easy to forget in the course of our everyday lives, to get caught up in relatively unimportant matters.
It’s certainly no excuse for this extreme kind of idiocy. However, anyone who dedicates their lives to theology is analogous to being fashion experts for the emperor’s new clothes. Once one is willing to believe without evidence, rational/critical thinking on anything may get that much harder.
What’s really hard is that there’s no arguing with such people. They believe they’re right, and nothing can change that.